First, thanks for creating this site - I have been really impressed by the clear, calm, logical answers that SmartLX provides. On to my question. After being raised Catholic and majoring in comparative religions in college, I've finally come to embrace atheism. But my question is about how I can best raise my two children (currently ages 6 and 9) to be skeptical and perhaps someday atheists, themselves. My husband still believes, and the kids go to church with him occasionally. More importantly, they attend an otherwise excellent Christian school where they have daily devotionals and there is much talk about Jesus. My concerns are threefold: First, they are being indoctrinated at a young age by people they respect, and it would be a big deal for me to contradict all the teachings of the school. Second (and admittedly selfishly), if I were to share my non-belief with my kids, they would be shocked and horrified. Third, if I were to somehow transform them into little atheists, they would be in for a really tough time at school - probably more from the students than the teachers. (Just for the record, there are plenty of Jews and Hindus and a few Muslims at the school, but somehow I feel like atheists would be viewed differently). So I guess I'm asking for any advice you may have on how to raise my kids to be skeptical and hopefully someday agnostic or atheist without completely rocking their world and without turning them into social pariahs. I've thought about starting with just enhancing their skepticism (any good kids' book recommendations?) and letting it develop naturally. Thoughts?

Atheist Answer:

Ta for the compliments.

Always keep in mind how long it took you to come around. I know you want better for your kids, but perhaps they need to take the same path you did.

Think a step further: why would they be shocked and horrified to find out you're an atheist? Partly because of the stigma attached to us by the religious, but ultimately they would be afraid for you. You reject God, so you're going to hell, that sort of thing. The most important thing when it comes out, and it will, is to let them know that you are not afraid yourself. (Another little fact which might help is the idea that not everyone who claims to be religious really is.)

At that, they'll either ask why not or argue with you. You'll then have a line of communication open, and it's up to you. Expect your husband to get involved, and make no attempt to make this happen behind his back. Just be open, and listen to them all.

I grew up religious too, as you might have read in another answer of mine. What first set me on the road to doubt was the fact that my father was an atheist. He didn't talk about it AT ALL, he just told me once and that was it. I wondered why, and later, I found my own reasons.

As for kids' books, I recommend the children's and young adult books of Terry Pratchett. A humanist himself, his books often encourage critical thinking despite having fantastical premises. A favourite of mine is The Wee Free Men. Later, perhaps they'd enjoy his other Discworld books.

Incidentally, I just watched Happy Feet and the anti-religion message in that is fairly obvious.

I am a graduate student in a molecular genetics department. In the past, our department graduated a student who now works at the creation museum in Kentucky, and is a huge embarassment to our program. Recently, I discovered that one of our most promising graduate students is a young-earth creationist. I don't feel like it is my place to tell her committee members, yet I feel like I have a moral obligation to prevent my department from granting degrees to these science-denying kooks. What should I do?

Atheist Answer:

I wonder which is worse, that your graduate in Kentucky is an embarrassment to your program or that their graduate from your program is an asset to the museum.

There are no grounds for holding the current student back based on beliefs as long as he/she is actually doing good work in molecular genetics. There's even room in the field proper for a young-earth creationist, because such a person might still contribute to our understanding of short-term processes while avoiding the long-term ones.

At the first attempt to use the science or the qualification to support creationism, however, things change. The moment young-earth or design "evidence" comes through in a paper, project or thesis, that's when every molecular geneticist in the vicinity needs to come down on your wunderkind like a ton of bricks - firstly by answering the claims themselves, of course.

If that happens while the student is still in the program, great, you might be able to keep it in the family. If it happens afterwards, rebuttals and refutations from your own academics need to be right on top of the pile. The message needs to be that the science of molecular genetics itself does not support these claims, and therefore this graduate is not applying it correctly because of separate beliefs.

i always find myself in a discussion with a theist about religion. and the one question that seems to come out of their mouths is "well how do you think we all got here? do you think we all evolved from rocks?" as i tell them it is impossible to know the truth behind that question because no one is alive today that knows anyone that old. they always turn to god when their questions are unknown or canter be answerd. personalyi dont believe a word the bible says. what do you say to this? also is it wrong to carry atheist literature with me so when people give me religious material i can give them atheist material?

Atheist Answer:

If you get right down to it, it's impossible to know the truth about what happened five minutes ago. Perhaps our memories are false and the evidence is planted. Same with the Bible, or for that matter any book which claims to be non-fiction.

Theists often claim God as their star witness. The problem is that in order to claim He was there and so claim historical authority on the origin of life, or the universe, you must first establish God's existence by other means entirely or your reasoning is circular.

Science looks for the best natural explanations. It has to make certain assumptions, things like the reliability of our collective memories and the constancy of physical laws (most of the time), but these are all assumptions which have yet to be contradicted. If you want to question science as a whole, you need to find a way to put these basic things in real doubt, and that's hard.

The atheist material is great to have with you, because there's so little of it around and it'll always be a surprise to an evangelist. Where do you get yours?

A user has reported that AVG prevented his browser from opening the site. The reason given is that the /node section contains a link to a dodgy site, but AVG doesn't pinpoint it. Chances are it's something I linked to in an answer. Does anyone know a way of finding out what that link/site is, so we can remove it? I'd hate to think that we're shutting people out unnecessarily.

I stumbled upon this site some time ago http://www.churchofreality.org/ And I thought it was interesting, And all the time I've been an atheist I've never heard of Realism until I found that site. It is a religion based on believing in anything that is actually real. Though it could just be a joke and I'm too stupid to get it. Is Realism/ChurchofReality essentially the same thing as being an Atheist/freethinker?
Thanks for your time reading this. -Mike

Atheist Answer:

You're not the first one to ask about the Church of Reality. Here's the previous question on the subject.

Wondering what your thoughts are on Jesus. Did he believe he was the son of God? Why did he live the life he did? Do you feel there is any truth to what the Bible says about him?

Atheist Answer:

First off, it's not guaranteed that there was a Jesus at all. It's pretty likely, all up, but there's no available physical evidence. Religious historians work from a set of documents about his life, most of which likely reference one another anyway. The most famous of these documents are of course the four Gospels that were selected for the Bible. There were many other Gospels which weren't.

Here is an apologetic site which argues that Jesus claimed to be God, or the son of God, or whatever. (I won't get into the whole Trinity argument about whether the two are separate.) The support given is exclusively Gospel quotes, and all but two of them are from John. Even the John quotes are not all explicit or delivered in the first person, especially when you consider the idea that we're all God's children, and He's everyone's Father.

Jesus himself probably never wrote a word in his life. It's not surprising given that literacy in the area was about 3%. Everything he said, if he said it, is filtered through at least one chronicler, or journalist if you like. That's even before translation and interpretation began. Nothing about him is straight from the horse's mouth.

Furthermore, none of the four Gospels was written within 20 years of Jesus' death. As far as we know, nothing was written about him in that time. The fact that the life expectancy was 25-30 years casts doubt on two things: that his actual companions wrote the Gospels named for them, and that the people who saw him would still be alive and able to corroborate or contradict the accounts (again, remember the literacy rate). Perhaps there was a reason the writers waited.

There's a major line of apologetic which argues that Jesus would not have sacrificed himself if he had not believed in his own divinity, and the apostles would not have carried on his message if they hadn't witnessed the resurrection with their own eyes. I've discussed that elsewhere. I won't deny that it can be a compelling argument, because it convinces a lot of people. That's not to say that it's necessarily sound.

Even if you accept a priori that Jesus and the apostles were all sincere, which I personally doubt, there are still ways in which they could be mistaken. One way is if a false resurrection was perpetrated by other people entirely, using a Jesus double. The Bible suggests that very few people actually saw Jesus after his death anyway, and were convinced simply by the empty tomb. If that's all it took to convince the average Israelite, hoaxers must have had it pretty easy back then.

With my kind of brain, I look at it probabilistically. One estimates for oneself the probability, given the assumption that the accounts of Jesus are mostly accurate, that he was actually divine and not just lying for a good cause or honestly mistaken. One then estimates the separate probability that the accounts of Jesus really are mostly accurate.

One then has to multiply the two probabilities together (converting into fractions first), and if they come to 50% or more then it's more likely than not (though not at all certain) that Jesus was divine. For that to happen, the two probabilities need an average of at least 70.7%. I'm not that sure by a long shot. How about you?